DLA Piper, Metlife, Pepsico and others: Telepresence is Finally Coming Age

Implementing telepresence seems to have other, less tangible, advantages beyond travel cost saving. What are some of those advantages? How do you quantify them to make the case for investing in the technology? Provide at least two filly developed examples.

One of the benefit of telepresence is helping green initiative because people would not have to move from place to place saving on at least fuel. Another advantage is that it can help employees of a company to be more relaxed because they don’t have to be on travels all the times and can have a telepresence at distinct meetings.

To quantify impact indirectly, the changes in employee turn-over rates and client retention can be assessed.

DLA Piper, MetLife, and other companies featured in the case are very optimistic about the technology. However, other than its costs, what are some potential disadvantages of implementing telepresence in the organizations?

The disadvantages of telepresence, other than costs are that important meetings can be disrupted due to technical issues. Also personal relation development might be compromised.

Do you think meetings conducted through telepresence technology will be similar to face-to face ones as the technology becomes more pervasive? How would the rules of etiquette change for telepresence meetings? Which would you like best?

I do not think that in the future, and with the development of technology, telepresence can become similar or a replacement to face-to-face meetings and communications. Humans will always prefer face-face meetings. The etiquettes roles that would need a change is an agreement on who gets up early due to time change in countries and regions around the world. Also participants would need to be more aware of microphones because their side communication can be transmitted through it.

I would always prefer face-to-face communication.